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Activision Lays-off 30 at 7 Studios

This is a doozy. Last spring, Activision bought 7 Studios, which had been developing Scratch: The Ultimate DJ for a company called Genius. Genius felt that Activision had unfairly purchased 7 Studios in an attempt to corner the DJ-game market with its own forthcoming offering, DJ Hero. A lawsuit resulted.

Now, 7 Studios is suffering more hardship at the hands of Activision, as it's been forced to lay off 30 staff members (via Industry Gamers). In a statement, Activision said that the layoffs were a part of the "realignment" of the studio, which would help it to "better reflect Activision's upcoming slate of music-based games." A source told Kotaku that the layoffs affect no less than half of the entire studio.

Tyler says: I hate writing these posts, especially considering the roller-coaster ride 7 Studios has had to endure over the year. Still, something doesn't add up here. Activision laid off a bunch of people to better reflect its plans for moving forward in the music genre, but it's not like it's going to make less music games. If anything, by specializing its studios, the publisher will continue to pump out more music games than before. So why chop 7 Studio's workforce in half?

To those affected by the cutbacks, I wish you the best of luck in these hard economic times.